and you may ask yourself, well, how did i get here?

For all of us who are curious about what I do all day:

One way or another, i have found myself essentially doing computational/corpus linguistics, albeit in the least high tech way possible: database building. Database building isn't hard, but it is slow going.

Here I am cross-referencing my database with a program that I used to build my database.

from this position I can see the whole place

I don't talk about my work often on the internet, mostly because I want to maintain some anonymity in this space. I'm working on building a website about myself & my research, and I am on what could most accurately be called "a facebook for academics", so I guess if you're really interested you can check out my work on there. (If I ever finish that website I'll be sure to let you know.)

While I am home - technically I am "on holiday" - I still have work to do. Yes, you read that right. I've been working on a chapter (10,000 words) of my masters thesis while I'm home. Anyway, while I've been home I've also been seeing some old friends, who have been inquiring about my work. I proposed a really big project for a 12-month Master's thesis, and it's been cut down a lot to something really specific since then. This was fine, in fact, that's the nature of research. Unfortunately, it meant that I didn't really know how to explain to people what I've been doing: I was explaining it as something between my proposed project and what I thought I was striving for.

I'm not going to lie to you - no matter how interesting and invested in your work you are, when that's all you do on a daily basis, it's hard to see outside your narrow field of focus sometimes. Sometimes it's kind of boring. My research involved building a database, and that was all I did for a month. You can really only look at words so many times before they start to lose their meanings, you know? It took some time to step back and really see what I had been doing every day. And then I realized that I hadn't been doing what I thought I had been doing all along... in fact, I was doing something very different. So now I have a new(er), more accurate description of what I've been working on, which fits and feels much better.

It's also good to get a different perspective on what I've been doing. Glasgow's great because there's a lot of linguistics going on, but I'm not entirely working in linguists and I'm not quite an English literature student - I'm kind of in the middle. I mentioned to a couple other grad-school-going friends lately that I'm having a hard time finding conferences and publications to be looking at, only because my field is so very small. And they all brought up an important point - you WANT to be the one of the only people doing what you're doing, because when you're done you'll have participated in an entirely new approach to your field. (This is very good for my ego, I'll have you all know.)

so this is the new year

I could write something long and redundant about 2010 in this space, but I won't. I think if you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that 2010 has been a big year for me. A new chapter at the dawn of a new decade, etc. I think it's been a good one, but I also think it's too early to say that.

The one thing I will say about 2010 is that it taught me a lot about myself. I've grown up a lot this year. I am happy with the person I am (becoming).

---

Usually, I'm not one for new year's resolutions. I always forget them after a day or two. I do have a new year's resolution for the blog though- I want to make it more interesting, rather than talking about being cold all the time. Unfortunately, my day-to-day life is rather boring - I sit in an office and read/write all day. But in my free time I'm doing some cool things, so I'll try to write about that. Deal?

---

2011. It feels weird in my mouth, like every new year does.

i'm coming home again

Can you believe it's almost Christmas? Christmas here is a big, huge deal - they take it really seriously. It's like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one mega-holiday, complete with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. (Hmm... where were you a few weeks ago!) Everything about it is very serious and fairly traditional. We even have what I have been told is a German-style Christmas market near my flat. If I ever felt marginalized for being Jewish in the States (read: not celebrating christmas) I would probably be very unhappy here, as 'not celebrating christmas' is not an option. GLASGOW LOVES CHRISTMAS AND YOU DO TOO. Everyone has Christmas parties for every sort of group possible - so far I have attended six parties, no joke - two different department ones (Glasgow Uni's and Strathclyde's) and two for the reading groups I attend (Socioling and Corpus Ling), and two friends' Christmases. It's definitely been a traditional (UK) Christmas, complete with mince pies, which to my surprise do not have meat in them ("mince" also means "ground beef" here) and lots of mulled wine. It has all been very exciting - I've never celebrated Christmas before, and certainly not like this.

But Almost-Christmas means I've been here for a little over three months. I am one-quarter finished with my master's degree, which is a bit daunting! I'm starting to work on a PhD project next... Almost Christmas also means I am coming home for a bit soon. Meanwhile, I apologize for not having written much in here lately other than to complain about being cold all the time -- I've been trying to get a lot of work done so i can take a few weeks off and relax while I'm in the states.

My first flight back leaves at 6:30 AM on Saturday. I think I am going to live-record my travels again (See september for the original ones), so you all have something to look forward to when I am fairly jetlagged. See you all soon!

but we are 78% water, even our pumping hearts

While the rest of the world seems convinced that the world has ended due to last week's 5 inches of snow over six days and yesterday's sudden onslaught of a proper New England-style snowfall for about 3 hours, prompting the university to strongly urge me to "not venture out of university buildings" (verbatim quote) and not one but two snow days in the past few days, I am generally unfazed, and therefore the only one in the office so far this morning. In fact I'm relieved that things are back to normal.

Come have a cup of tea with me, as we're out of coffee, and I have about 6 more cups of tea to drink throughout the day to stay awake anyway.

And I never love England more than when covered in snow

Strathclyde is on a mega death hill - a fairly steep one. (I don't know who thought that was a good idea.) All of this snow - all six inches of it - is making everyone nervous, so I have a snow day today. I can kind of see why they're worried about people falling and dying on the hills. Glasgow Uni is at least flat.

But I have things to do - I'm trying to get as much done as possible before I go home for three weeks. Also, I refuse to take a snow day for less than a foot of snow. So I'm headed here this morning:
Does this make me a New England Weather Snob? You bet.

happy thanksgiving!

In solidarity, today I am eating a turkey sandwich for lunch (& looking fairly demonic, sorry about that).

Tonight I am going to a seminar over at Glasgow Uni and then I am going to my second Thanksgiving dinner with some international friends; I'm very excited. Thanksgiving is something I think everyone can get behind when you present it as "eat a lot and drink a lot until you think you will explode, take a nap, AND THEN EAT MORE."

Get off the Internet! I'll meet you in the street (ii)

So I bet you are all waiting with bated breath to find out if I was severely accosted, etc this weekend. SPOILER ALERT: I was not. TAKE THAT 1997! (if you are confused, go back one post.)

Both of the girls I met were wonderful people and we're arranging a second meet up. Like, it's scary at first (how are we going to recognize each other IF WE HAVE NEVER SEEN EACH OTHER? Should we exchange phone numbers? You already have my real name. WHAT IF YOU KIDNAP & RAPE ME) but basically, meeting people from the internet is inherently awkward. How can it not be? You know their personality and things about them, and you obviously have things in common, but a lot of it was really first-date-like. So what do you do? How long have you been in Glasgow for? TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF. Except you don't need to do all the awkward subtleties of trying to impress the other party because you effectively already know each other. It's really strange, but cool to put a face to the name.

But you know what, it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing them again. And, If anything, I keep getting better and better at introducing myself to people over the span of ~1hr. (Frequently I meet with people for about an hour or so via Grad School Networking - tomorrow I am meeting a girl from Glasgow Uni's Gaelic & Celtic languages department for coffee; we're doing some similar research.) Can I put this under "communicates effectively" on my resume?

a day in the life

Every week or so I go over to Glasgow University. Glasgow University is sort of like the BU or NYU of Glasgow, whereas Strathclyde, which is my school, is more like MIT. Glasgow Uni is this amazing, magical, campusy place (complete with trees!). They've got an English language/linguistics department and a literature department, and their library is amazing, whereas Strathclyde is in the middle of the city centre and much less humanities-oriented. (Basically I have a giant crush on Glasgow University.)




Today I listened to a lecture about relative pronouns in the morning and spent my afternoon reading original texts from the 1600s. While this is not the book I actually read (predictably, the special archives collection won't let me take take pictures); I was actually reading about Early Modern English Women's social roles. Last week I was granted access by Oxford to download their full-text Old English and Middle English databases; which means now I have the entire written (documented) early English corpus on my computer. Also today I met with one of the big people in corpus linguistics and a few weeks ago I met with someone who headed the Oxford English Dictionary's recently-published Historical Thesaurus project, both at Glasgow University.

YOU GUYS HOW IS THIS MY LIFE I DON'T EVEN KNOW

Help, I'm Alive!: A One-Month Retrospective

[editor's note: Two years ago in late July, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland for a weekend, with food poisoning. Today I am back there on a hike with some Germans, hopefully without food poisoning. Through the magic of the internet and auto-posting, I present the following.]

You guys, I have been in Glasgow for a month! I can't believe it's been a month already. Things are going so, so well - this blog has sort of shown the ups and downs of the first few weeks of moving to a new country by myself, but I definitely feel like each day is better than the last. There's a lot of things that I am still working out - like what side of the street and which side of the stairs to walk on. (This is more complicated than you'd expect.) Sometimes I still have difficulties figuring out where I would go to buy things - we don't have Wal-Mart or Target or CVS here - but this is getting better. Some days I wake up and just really want to see something instantly recognizably American, like peanut butter and jelly or the word "eggplant", and some days I want be able to talk to someone from home and not have to wait for 7pm to be able to do so. But moving to a new place by yourself is an emotional rollercoaster, let alone a new country or a new continent! I think I am doing very well. I have tentative friends! It's all very exciting.

It's an amazing opportunity to be here, and even more of an amazing opportunity to be working with the man who invented my field in addition to meeting all these other important linguists and literary people across three institutions (Strathclyde, Glasgow University, the University of Edinburgh). I am very, very lucky. There's no second-guessing crossing an ocean to do something and the more I am getting into what I am actually doing the more I am absolutely certain this is was absolutely 100% the right choice for me. I love all the work I am doing, and the people around me are so passionate about their work, so deeply involved that I can't imagine them doing anything else. I've been in contact with all these important linguistics people - the other day I met the woman who headed the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. (No big deal or anything...only one of my life goals achieved! She was so interested in what I had done and what I am doing here.) Glasgow Uni and Strathclyde are already both aggressively courting me for their PhD program next year; I just want to tell them to cool off a little bit!

I can't believe this is my life. I am so, so lucky.

I definitely still feel like I have a giant American flag tattooed on my forehead, but with every day I feel more integrated into Scottish life. Maybe soon I will start talking with a Scottish accent. (Or at least write a blog post about it, as I keep meaning to.) Or maybe that will just have to wait for month two...

people told me slow my roll, i'm screaming out "fuck that!"

One of the first things I was told when I arrived here was "slow down." I was also told not to worry about "breakneck American speed", whatever that was.

I am beginning to understand what is meant by "breakneck American speed".

Basically, if you know anybody in graduate school in the States, you know that they keep 15-20 hour days, are often wearing clothes from three days ago and look pretty ragged. Being a graduate student in the US is far from a glamorous thing - you'll often get looks of pity from other people when you tell them you're in graduate school! This is what I was expecting from graduate school in the UK - and was asking advice of people whom I had viewed as successful graduate students on surviving the journey. I had assumed that graduate school was a universal experience of intellectual masochism.

This is simply not how higher education works here. I was gearing up for 15-20 hour days of work only to find out that nobody would EVER do that! The postgrads I share an office with nearly fell out of their chairs when they heard that American grad students would work that much. In ONE DAY? they asked. They said that if I worked for six to eight hours a day "that would be a beautifully productive day" and that "I should go to the pub immediately". SIX TO EIGHT HOURS, you guys. (They do make a valid point, though - after a while, doesn't the quality of the work you produce go down? Well, yes...) Later I inquired about gaining access to the office over the weekend, and everyone stared at me. "Why would you come in over the weekend unless you had a giant deadline hanging over your head?" they asked. Because I have work to do? I don't know when they get anything done.

I try to show up at my office around 10 or 11 Monday through Friday and work until about 7 or 8 pm unless I have seminars to attend or meetings with people. When I go home I stop working. Not only is this unheard of in American-style grad school - or any American education system really, I am still being told I work too much! As it is, I am already pulling "ridiculous hours at the office"; I am almost always the first person to arrive. The other grad students think I am crazy for even attempting this.

It is arguably harder to slow down than it is to speed up. Given pressure, I think you can definitely learn how to do more work. (You might not like it, however.) But being told to do less work? I'm having such a hard time figuring out what i should DO with myself! I have a book that I have been working through slowly for one of my professors and could be working harder at, and I have other readings that I could be working on too. But no, I decided, I should take the weekend off. Or at least as much of it as I could bear. If you knew me in college, you know that I would do schoolwork every day except for Friday (I would sleep on Friday.)

So in an effort to slow down, on my first weekend after the semester started, I:
read a book for fun,
went to a farmer's market,
saw three bands play a gig,
went grocery shopping at two separate stores,
visited three art galleries,
scoped out a couple other art galleries,
looked into seeing some plays,
tried to hunt down some books I need for a class I joined,
walked to a new part of the city and back,
sent some emails,
typed up some drafts for future posts,
and read two articles and wrote a 500 word response
...all before 6pm on Sunday night. (Last weekend was quite similar.)

So much for slowing down! It's so strange to be told to relax. I've been working on it, though but I feel like I'm not not doing anything ever! As it is, I don't really have anything "due" at any specific date; I just sit and read and produce ideas. (I should point out that I don't really have classes that have things due - as an MRes student, I'm essentially a PhD student, but without the title.) I don't know what to do with all this free time. I suppose I should cultivate a hobby or seven.

everything in its right place

My office is in this building. It is one of the ugliest, out-of-place buildings I think I have ever been in.

My office is on the 7th floor and from it I can see all the way past the West End from my desk. It's an amazing view.

Tonight I went up to the 14th floor and saw all of the city as the sun set and night fell - it was beautiful. I thought to myself, "I live here. This is my city."

This is the first time I've truly felt like it's not some sort of weird interim thing - I really am here, and this is really what I am doing. I have worked so hard to be here, and being here finally feels absolutely right.

HI FROM MY OFFICE

I brought my laptop to the office recently to try and see if I can avoid using our ancient brick machines and use my mac instead. Thus far it has been unsuccessful - I apparently have to call the IT people and ask for a new IP address before I can get online. (Have I mentioned how much I hate the Internet here?)

Either way, this is where I spend a majority of my time, in case you were curious. I face a window that gives me a perfect view of Glasgow - it's distractingly beautiful. I'll try to get a picture of that soon.

Things are going really well so far by the way, guys. I'm getting into a routine and I'm starting to get comfortable. It's still scary, but it's definitely getting better!

this is happening!

Today is my first day of classes! I'm wearing my lucky underwear for the occasion.

I'm excited to get started, because it means I will be busy and meeting people, which is what I want. At present moment, I am only taking a reasearch skills class, which is only for first-year postgraduate students, so we'll all be in the same situation! I still have a lot to do in terms of getting all set up, but at least I will be around other people.

I've been told I'm the first person in something like 10 years to come here specifically to work with this one guy, who basically invented my field - that's totally not a high pressure situation! I keep reminding myself they wouldn't have me here if I couldn't do it. But at the same time, I am letting myself be scared, because it is OK to be scared! I think I would be more worried if I wasn't scared about this. I am a long way from home and I am doing okay. I just have to keep reminding myself of this.

living with the living

Hi friends! Lots of things have been going on and most of them have been sort of logistical and therefore probably very boring to hear about. Here are some basic things that are kind of interesting in a list.

1. The education system here is so different - almost everyone else in the English department is native to Scotland, if not Glasgow. It seems that you generally go to university near where you grew up and then you keep going there for your Masters and ultimately your PhD. This means I am one of the only people to have traveled to go here, and I am on a supreme learning curve when it comes to the department, the university, and life in Scotland in general.

2. Time is a cultural construct. (I know, I'm sorry.) I'm still working out what counts as "early" in the morning! I am working on getting my stomach on a food schedule - Here we get lunch around 1 or 2, go to the pub around five or six, and then eat dinner around eight or nine. I don't know how to sustain that! We had a department party last night, which involved a meeting for all English postgrads and a second meeting with a few other departments we're friendly with, both of which featured wine. Then a group of us went to the pub afterwards. When do you eat dinner in that? You've just had lunch, so you're not hungry, but by the time you leave the pub you are STARVING. (Translation: I was embarrasingly drunk.)

3. I had to apply for a Glasgow University library card, which was easy enough. However, this currently means that I have 5 library cards: the library in my hometown, UNH, Harvard, Strathclyde and Glasgow University. Additionally I have access to a bunch of networked libraries on the same systems (UNH is linked to the Greater Boston library system, for instance.) I would estimate right now that I have access to over thirty libraries, which is really exciting!

4. I was given an office, too. AN OFFICE. Well, it is more like a desk in a room of postgraduates but an office nonetheless. It makes me feel really important to say I have an office. I also have a computer, which is an ancient brick running windows XP.

5. I am quickly learning that this is not a very tech-oriented place. (Hey UNH folks, remember blackboard? I MISS IT. you read that right. Our @strath.ac.uk email goes through Outlook, and in order to have full functionality in the module you have to use Internet Explorer. No, I am not kidding about this.)

Meet All The People!

One of my advisors got me in touch with a majority of the other postgraduates in the English Department. They are all very nice, taking me out to lunch/dinner/coffee, etc. They are all very nerdy intelligent people who get really excited about immensely nerdy things. (One of them, for example, is writing his PhD dissertation on Scottish avant-garde magazines from the 60s.) One of my advisors actually invented literary linguistics, and everyone works on it to some extent here. I am in the right place! I HAVE FOUND MY PEOPLE. it is very, very comforting.

I will be working with some people at Glasgow University and I am to look at the linguistics lectures at the university of Edinburgh (they have a very famous linguistics dept) and attend some of their lecture series while writing and researching my MRes project. On top of all of that, I've been asked to work on a project about poetic verse. (I have been assured that I do not need to work at quote "breakneck American pace", though I'm not really sure how that will work.)

We have a postgraduate room full of desks and ancient computers which is charming in it's own sort of way (though we have a beautiful view of the city), and we have a kitchenette complete with a coffeepot (coffee is not A Thing here, tea is, which is fine except for the fact that you need me awake!) Most people drink instant coffee, which is far from acceptable; I've been told that "filter coffee" as it's called here is a big treat. (I bought the most american-looking coffeepot of all time for the apartment. My roommates are baffled by it, but don't seem to mind it.)

And the mystery 4th roommate showed up! She is also Irish and also studying Forensic Science. It turns out that she is from the same school as our other Irish flatmate - they went to undergrad together, took classes together, never met each other, but know all the same people and now are living together. It's unlikely, that's for sure.

I keep forgetting that i am an "international student" so I'm trying to get on board with that. I went to a International Student mixer yesterday evening and had fun, so maybe i will keep going to those. It's hard to meet people in a city, I think - I guess I have to go find some hobbies and get going with those. But really, I wish there was another American here. (there's a lot of canadians, which is kind of nice.) But, like, I miss America and American things. I feel like I'm in America sometimes, except for the fact that nothing is recognizably american. A lot of the brands are the same, but I don't know where to buy these sorts of things.

I was writing this while I wait for our hot water to turn on. As you can imagine I am not a big fan of this system of "turn on the hot water". Can't a girl just get a warm shower in the morning without having to wait?

send you off on a big adventure, Xs lead you to the treasure

HI FROM TARTANVILLE
actually, no, HI FROM STARBUCKS
you read that right! STARBUCKS. I am trying really hard to not be an obnoxious American, but I can't help it if the only places to get wifi are Starbucks. There are a bunch of them around here. I don't really get it, coffee's not a big thing here, but there are a lot of Starbucks.

Basically, I don't have the ability to load websites until I register as a Strathclyde student, and I don't want to register as a student until I've actually figured out a course of action (am I taking classes? yes? no? I'm still not sure), this way I can avoid fixing any mistakes I might make. And, like, I have all week to do it. Somehow I have email, Skype, and AIM access from my flat. (get at me.)

I'm still getting settled, but my apartment is nice. It's small, very purple, but it's nice. I have three roommates (we all have our own rooms) but only two of them are here so far. One is from England and the other is from Ireland (& I'm an american). We're betting that our next roommate will be Scottish, if she ever shows up. It came with more stuff than I had anticipated, like a pile of cleaning supplies. However, there are some weird things about it - we have to turn on the hot water before we can use it. So, someone has to wake up at least 30 min ahead of whenever they want to take a not-freezing shower. We've been informed that in the winter we might need to do this an hour ahead of time. I  think the idea is that we will save energy (how green of us) and $$$ -- we pay for energy usage - by not heating the water all the time.

As for living in the city, it's going well. I'm decidedly not a "city person" - I like suburbia; it doesn't bother me to have to drive 20 minutes anywhere. It's kind of nice in it's own little boring way. (I went to university in a place that was possibly more boring than my hometown.) I live in a very nice part of the city, close to the major shopping streets. Apparently Glasgow has the best shopping in the UK outside of London. I still have some trouble crossing the street, though (which way am i supposed to look? OH GOD A CAR); usually I just wait until someone else shows up and move when they do. You walk on the opposite side of the street too (this is more complicated), and I have no idea what to do when I get to a staircase - which way do I go?

I live in a really gay part of the city - they weren't kidding about that! - my neighborhood (is it a neighborhood?) is covered in rainbow flags. (A sign on the hairdressers' next to me says "gays, straights, bisexuals, no problems here; it's bald people we have trouble with"). My street has a lot of indian restaurants and I am across the street from the BBC symphony hall. I'm not far away from campus, either, which is nice too.

This week I am meeting a lot of the other postgraduates for dinner/drinks/coffee. They have all been very friendly! I'm looking forward to meeting them.

I haven't gotten a chance to walk around and take pictures yet. I will do this soon, I promise! Here is a picture of my key to the laundry room. Yup.

leaving on a jet plane

I've been flying on planes since I was a baby. I really love flying; it makes me feel really safe. I realize I am probably in the minority of people who feel this way. I guess I really just love condensed spaces. I love airports, too; I love sitting at a gate watching the planes come and go. The whole experience is just really comforting to me.

I have flown a lot of times in my life, often internationally (to Canada, mind you, which is in fact a different country, though I assure you this only a mere technicality).

Tonight I am getting on a plane that will take me to London. Tomorrow morning I am getting on a second plane to Glasgow.
I do not know anybody in Scotland.
I am in the program that I have been dreaming about for years.
This is really happening. I am really doing this. I am so nervous and excited.

(I should warn you that I will probably not have internet access for a few days, and I am going to be super busy in the first week or so. However, I will be back on here as soon as possible.)

Not A Packing List: How To Compress Your Life Into Airport-Friendly Containers

As you read this, I am waist-deep in packing. I am terrible at packing - I save it all for the very last second, putting everything into random boxes without rhyme or reason, "to be sorted later"... and then "later" happens. It's kind of like unpacking and packing simultaneously. Luckily, I am not bringing a lot of things with me. Remember what you brought to your college apartment? Condense it to the bare minimum of things you need to survive without having to start 100% anew. (We are aiming for 75% anew.) Some of it simply isn't allowed on airplanes!

It comes down to this: I have a lot of objects. I bet you do too. The last time you moved, did you keep finding things that were yours that you can't get rid of it because you need it? These are the things that are so familiar that they are almost like breathing. They're on every back-to-school shopping list, crammed into every car moving back to campus.

Okay. Take all those things, put them in boxes, and put them aside. You are packing for an intercontinental journey which is going to last for at least 3 years!

There are lots of guides on the internet about how to pack for a 2-4 day business trip, a two-week-long vacation, and even some guides about how to pack for a semester abroad. Sadly, there are not guides to Packing For The Rest Of Your Life In A New Country. This would be very helpful. I do not have a host family; I am renting a room in a flat owned by the university. (Thankfully, this strange cultural thing of having graduate students be as on-campus as possible saves me the stress of finding my own apartment from many miles away.)


I am moving to Scotland with a suitcase, a duffel bag, and a backpack or two.

Here is a list of (some of!) the things that are NOT coming with me.

> cookware (pots/pans, measuring cups, mixing bowls, basic cooking tools)
> dinnerware (plates/bowls/utensils)
> drinkware/glassware*
> toiletries** (shampoo, conditioner, lotion, soap, etc)
> paper printer paper, notebooks. (they also use a different size paper than we do in the states/canada. our standard paper is 8.5x11 inches, they use A4, which is 8.27x11.69 inches. i must assimilate.)
> printer
> coffee pot
> laundry detergent
> bedding (sheets, pillows, comforter, blankets, foam padding)
> cleaning supplies
> extra furniture (side tables, chairs, etc)
> lighting
> books (i shipped my Essential Linguistics Textbooks Collection to one of my professors last week. everything else must stay.)
> dvd collection region 1 vs region 2 encoding /takes up too much space (i am eternally thankful that the invention of ipods means that i am not leaving my music collection behind due to space constraints.)
> trashcan
> desk supplies
> decorative things (certainly not all of them are coming. a select few, perhaps, might be. if you have ever been in my room at school, you know it certainly was a busy space.)

So, basically, I am bringing a year's worth of clothes, my computer, and not much else.

*I might be able to cram a few of these things into my luggage.
**This is complicated, as the water in the UK is different - heavier, almost - than American water. Therefore American products do not always react the same way leaving you feeling greasy and gross. Nobody believes me when i say this; it's hard to explain. You're just going to have to take my word on it.

I am arriving to Scotland with two days to run around crazed, buying as many of these things as possible before moving into my apartment. Mum is coming with me to help me move in, because God knows I do not have the ability to handle all of the necessary restocking by myself in under two days. It will be a giant game of Collect All The Things.

left and leaving

This past weekend I was in New Hampshire for what is more than likely the last time, engaging in what I called Operation SEE ALL THE PEOPLE. It was like a choose-your-own adventure game, but featuring me. I would be in/on/around Planet UNH for about 56 consecutive hours (including sleeping) and everyone had the opportunity to make plans with me - I would do whatever they wanted me to do. While this might sound like a logistical disaster it actually worked out very well - I think I saw something like 30-40 people while I was around.

And everyone had such nice things to say! There were so many nice words of affirmation and love and encouragement from so many people - people who i seriously respect were telling me that I am inspiring and motivated and intelligent and Going To Do Great Things.

It was strange to be in a place where I was essentially outmoded - the freshmen are tiny babies and I felt too old and out of place. (A friend put it well when she said "if you had been here for another year you would hate it. you've maximized the university at this point.") While I'm really nervous about meeting my new department on Thursday - they are all going to be smarter than me! - I am super excited about the classes that I'm taking and what I will be doing. I know that I am definitely making the right decision. There's no second guessing getting on a plane.